Sarah Mae Schmidthttps://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com
Fall 2013 Media Arts Portfolio Class BlogMon, 25 Sep 2017 23:23:00 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngSarah Mae Schmidthttps://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com
Space Puppy!https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/185/
https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/185/#respondFri, 06 Dec 2013 12:13:13 +0000http://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/?p=185]]>Space Puppy Storyboard export is here. This coming week, I plan on timing out these boards to make a quick animatic. Over winter break, animation begins! I’m super excited to start – it’s been a long time coming. Watch out!]]>https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/185/feed/0sarahmaeschmidtSpace PuppyAA (and an O) for Everyonehttps://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/aa-and-an-o-for-everyone/
https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/aa-and-an-o-for-everyone/#respondFri, 18 Oct 2013 03:56:29 +0000http://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/?p=58]]>Affinity, ability, and opportunity. The job these past few weeks was to exhaust these three ideas into ridiculousness and filter them down to what they all have in common. The middle of the graph is where we will inevitably find our next creative endeavor.

This is something anyone can do, and I suggest you give it a shot. You might end up like I did – after a few weeks of filtering it through different pages in your sketchbook, you might come to some weird revelation.

After really considering who I was as an artist/a human being, I came to some conclusions:

In all seriousness, I really did boil all my points down into about three key, connected points.

One of the points I couldn’t ignore in my affinity corner was my love for music, especially local music. I spent a chunk of my teen years going to shows and loving every minute of it. I have had (and continue to have) the ability to lend my illustration/motion talents to bands through gig poster creation/lyric video opportunities (basically, how I learned Flash). I made a cartoon using a song from a local band – and with that short, I was able to connect with another artist with similar tastes who said that they were willing to collaborate and promote my work if I helped make him a banner. Simple examples, but opportunity none the less.

I have a huge affinity for cartoons. I was raised on classics such as Looney Tunes and Ren and Stimpy. I had a serious affinity for 90’s Nicktoons and enjoyed a steady diet of them until my family got more channels on our television. Today, I like almost anything I can catch on TV as well as all the wonderful stuff I can surf to on the internet (God bless Catbug). My love of cartoons translates into my ability to be good at creating, telling, and recognizing good stories – even becoming my own cartoon-y character. Before I was in animation, a friend said, “those animation majors – they walk down the hallway talking to each other in funny voices” – and all I could think was, “I feel like I would fit in with those people.” Switching to animation led me to getting better at telling stories which ultimately led to working on shorts with my friend who recently graduated. Now I have the ability to work on fast-turnaround web-cartoons as well as have a focused outlet for my own cartoons.

Last but not least, I have this strange affinity of all things small-town. Being from a small town, learning the base of my morals and disciplines from marching band season, etc. – I feel like I gained this odd-to-explain way of connecting to people. The small-town girl in me likes to be involved, and this involvement helped me have the ability to communicate and embrace the community of CCAD. Through joining/helping lead a student group, becoming an orientation leader, and just “being there”, I have found myself happy as can be senior year. For example, I finished a project this summer which gave me the opportunity to have reimbursement for festival submissions. I also found an extremely solid group of passionate people who want to go to California together – not only next month for CTNX, but also next summer to split rent with. The fact is: I can call people like this my friends – and in a way, members of my family; I couldn’t be more thankful for having found them.

So what’s in the middle of my circle graph?

Being a happy artist and making the most of where I am at right now.

Basically – I am going to stop typing and get going. There’s work to do!

I also have to take a second to thank anyone who has contributed to helping me out on making this circle graph easier to envision.

]]>https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/aa-and-an-o-for-everyone/feed/0sarahmaeschmidtImageImagekitty3Social Media Fluffhttps://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/social-media-fluff/
https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/social-media-fluff/#respondSat, 21 Sep 2013 06:38:46 +0000http://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/?p=51]]>The two social media mediums I chose to explore more deeply this semester are Twitter and Instagram. I am super interested in beginning to follow animators and artists with similar niches on Twitter (something I have started doing over the past month) as well as Instagram. I occasionally get new artist-people following me on these platforms, and I usually notice them when I apply appropriate hash-tags to my posts (especially on Instagram). I want to really utilize the power of following the right kinds of people and using the right kinds of hash-tags (as well as playing with the ideas of what a hash-tag is).

I am currently 2000 some tweets deep on Twitter. My favorite part of Twitter is that I feel like I can easily dispense and share small tidbits of thought. As an artist, I am always thinking of something clever that I wish I could tell someone, but will more than likely forget about (something that usually isn’t as clever as I think it is, but still). The way people represent themselves on social media platforms is a direct conversation about who they are – and I like to think of my Twitter as not just a place where I retweet other social media posts, but also where I can let my humor show through – something that makes me human. I also can show bits of my life that people can relate to – whether it be the music I am listening to, where I am at, what is up, what I’m thinking, even a retweet from a friend – just lots of little ways to sell myself as the character that I am.

I think it’s important to remind my audience that I AM a character – a quite unique one, at that – not just someone who draws them!

This idea of shameless celebration of MY character brings me to the reason my second choice of social media to explore is Instagram. This summer, I started a steady, somewhat consistent few weeks where I would do “Selfie-Sundays” to mock the one of the most popular (and obnoxious) hash-tags on Instagram. I would draw myself looking ridiculous in different styles. I think it would a really great exercise to do a quick self-portrait each Sunday – this would force me to not only keep posting content, but to keep showing chunks of my personality to my audience.

Another branch of this idea would be to do “Throwback-Thursday”,”Man Crush Monday” and “Woman Crush Wednesday” posts to mock the popular indulgent hashtags of Instagram.

Another idea I have to flex my own personal character muscles would be to draw random, abstract, strange, nameless, different quirky characters (which I have drawn here and there throughout my life) and post them consistently – that way I can get the chance of becoming “that girl who makes those weirdo creatures all the time”. This is something easier to stay consistent with, and what I already have been doing, in the world of Instagram.

Also – I am very interested in using these platforms to show the process on my thesis project. I would like to lead up to next semester, where I would post a picture of an alien almost every day in order to play up the concept of the short (and how there are 1000 aliens to destroy)! I have put lots of thought into how I could fluff up momentum for my thesis, and this is a great way to start the gears turning in my favor.

]]>https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/social-media-fluff/feed/0sarahmaeschmidtA Response to Linchpinhttps://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/a-response-to-linchpin/
https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/a-response-to-linchpin/#respondFri, 20 Sep 2013 15:24:02 +0000http://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/?p=35]]>“Linchpin” is a compelling piece of work by Seth Godin. Our professor suggested getting the audiobook version so that we could listen to it while we worked. This in itself was a novel idea I was surprised I’d never tried, being such a podcast fan. I ordered it the very next day.

Some people might have instantly downloaded it, but I thought: “Golly, if I had the CD version, I could let my classmates and friends who are interested borrow it”.

I was trying to think in what could be a “linchpin” mindset before actually reading Linchpin. Also, I am a sucker for the tangible-ness that is a CD, a book – something to hold.

Weeks passed. I checked the mail every day, received all of my other class books – still no Linchpin. Faithful to my purchase, I checked my mail until the day before it was supposed to be finished. Nothing. I used Download Helper on Firefox to download a YouTube rip of the audio version. I had no time to loose.

One of the biggest concepts that stuck with me was the idea of being an artist. Being a senior in art college is just as fun as it is extremely daunting – with the clock seemingly racing us to push out cover letters, resumes, and portfolios so that we can get a job and make something of our degree. I have seen it happen more frequently than ever in my time at this school that there is a dangerous disconnect between focusing on “getting the job” and “being the artist”.

One of Seth Godin’s moments that I had to jot down while listening was, “Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and emotional.” The quote reminded me of another favorite – one I would say that I live by, and always think of, from one of Chuck Palahniuk’s novels, Diary: “Everything you do is a self-portrait.” If these two quotes are true, I suppose me trying to get a tangible, inspirational, and informative item I could share with my friends in and outside of the class says a lot about me.

When you put love into the work that you do, and when you know it’s what you would rather be doing over anything else – that is when you create things you can genuinely stand by. I believe that it is those moments when you are capable of showing the most true form of yourself. Linchpin was a further iteration of that feeling: do what you love, and the money will follow. I always try and remember to come back to the reason I came to art school in the first place: I love making things. Telling stories. I have been told I’m not half bad at it.

This year is going to be about having faith in the inner artist in myself and in others. By honing that, according to this novel, I can surely become an indispensable team player.

The audiobook finally arrived in my mailbox this week. Hallelujah.

]]>https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/a-response-to-linchpin/feed/0sarahmaeschmidtScreen shot 2013-09-20 at 11.24.27 AMCareer Amplifier Listhttps://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/career-amplifier-list/
https://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/career-amplifier-list/#respondThu, 19 Sep 2013 06:41:19 +0000http://sarahmaeschmidt.wordpress.com/?p=26]]>Awesome places to be featured and find more featured artists: